Free Republic

At the Centralian Gold abattoir outside Alice Springs, business is brisk. Scores of animals are brought in each week to be slaughtered, deboned and packaged into sausages, steaks and mince. But the largest slabs of meat on the racks are not beef, lamb or even kangaroo, but camel. Garry Dann, who owns the business, describes camel meat as "beautiful, healthy and organic" and says demand for the product is growing every month. Travelling in large, aggressive packs, they prevent Aboriginal women from venturing into the countryside for fear of being attacked or trampled Mr Dann, who sells camel sausages, mince...

Camel hunting, the new Aboriginal pastime By Nick Squires in Sydney Last Updated: 7:05pm GMT 10/02/2008 Aborigines in Australia's arid desert interior have hit on an innovative way of tackling the boredom and substance abuse which have ravaged so many of their communities - hunting camels. Camel hunting is the innovative new way of tackling the boredom and substance abuse which have ravaged Aboriginal communities Where their forbears pursued traditional prey such as kangaroos and monitor lizards, the younger generation is heading into the scrub to shoot plentiful one-humped dromedaries. The camels were introduced in the 19th century from India...

As the rush intensifies to find new reserves of fossil fuels, digs throughout the West are yielding another byproduct -- fossils. Oilfield workers in western Oklahoma have unearthed deposits of fossils containing extinct species of camel and horse, along with as-yet-uncounted other animals, while excavating a new well, Oklahoma City’s The Oklahoman reports. An earthmover uncovered the fossilized bones in July after removing 6 meters of soil in the state-run Packsaddle Wildlife Management Area. Paleontologists brought to the scene identified 13 separate fossil deposits, which have tentatively been dated as far back as 5 million to 12 million years. Among...

High Arctic camels, like those shown in this illustration, lived on Ellesmere Island during the Pliocene warm period about 3.5 million years ago. (Image: Julius Csotonyi) Camels are the poster animals for the desert, but researchers now have evidence that these shaggy beasts once lived in the Canadian High Arctic. The fossil remains of a 3.5-million-year-old camel were found on Ellesmere Island in Canada's northernmost territory, Nunavut. The camel was about 30 percent bigger than modern camels and was identified using a technique called collagen fingerprinting. The finding, detailed in March 5 in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that...

Camels get their humps from giant ancestors which roamed the Arctic rather than the desert and stored fat on their back to help them survive polar conditions, researchers claim.New fragments of leg bone discovered in the far north of Canada suggest that modern camels are descended from ancestors which lived within the Arctic Circle. Thirty fossilised pieces of a lower leg bone belonging to a camel which lived 3.5 million years ago were found by researchers on Ellesmere Island, in Canada's High Arctic. The giant mammals would likely have measured up to 3.5m (11ft) in height and had one hump...

OTTAWA – Ancient, mummified camel bones dug from the tundra confirm that the animals now synonymous with the arid sands of Arabia actually developed in subfreezing forests in what is now Canada's High Arctic, a scientist said Tuesday. About 3.5 million years ago, Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island's west-central coast would have looked more like a northern forest than an Arctic landscape, said paleobotanist Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

Students at a Connecticut elementary school have been irritating teachers because they imitate the Geico 'Hump Day' commercial featuring a camel that walks around an office and asks workers what day it is. Some students at the Vernon Center Middle School reportedly disregard what day it is when they use the phrase, and use it on days that are not technically 'hump days.'

The struggling nation of Somaliland is betting these beasts of burden will be on the menu far and wide.From early in the morning until midday, the streets of southern Hargeisa, Somaliland periodically shut down as hundreds of camels trundle along the narrow city streets. Taxi drivers give way, milling on the side of the road, wiping their cars clean of the dust and mud kicked up by the procession. Ultimately, the beasts file through the gates of the Hargeisa Camel Market. No one really runs the market. It’s just one of dozens of sites across the country where nomads, locals,...

The Second GCC Camel Race Championship kicked off here yesterday evening under the sponsorship of His Highness Deputy Amir and Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Saba. Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Jahra Governor Sheikh Mubarak Al-Humoud Al-Sabah, the representative of the championship sponsor, said a large number of camel owners from the six GCC member states are taking part in the race. He hoped that Gulf fans would be able to enjoy the camel-racing sports, which used to be practiced by Gulf forefathers. For his part, the head of the organizing committee and chairman of the Public Authority for Youth...

Want to take a ride on a real camel in northeast Fresno to get an experience of the Middle East? The Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno is offering camel rides -- and more -- at its first bazaar, which will be from 4 to 10 p.m. Oct. 27 at the center, 2111 E. Nees Ave. The center is making arrangements to bring the camel from the Los Angeles area. Huda Munjy, chairwoman of the bazaar and a board member at the center, says the camel rides are to provide the community with an experience they can enjoy and remember for...

Toronto eateries now offer camel burgers and kangaroo kebabs. Emiratis are addicted to Canada’s premier doughnut chain, Tim Horton’s. So it makes for kharmic culinary balance that Torontonians chomp a North American staple with a crazy MidEast twist: camel burgers. Casbah, a food kiosk in downtown Toronto, serves up camel burgers. “It’s very healthy, and it has no fat,” Casbah owner Dali Chehimi told CBC news. He sources his camel meat from Whitehouse Meats in St. Lawrence Market, who ship it up from Australia (where camel culling is helping to reduce feral camel populations in the Aussie outback). Whitehouse Meats...

(CNN) -- The United States offers millions for information leading to the capture of the world's most wanted terrorists. A Somali militant group has purportedly countered with an offer of camels for U.S. officials. Al-Shabaab has placed a bounty of 10 camels for President Barack Obama and two camels for information on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. An audio statement posted on jihadist websites purportedly from Al-Shabaab jeered news that the United States is offering millions of dollars for information on seven key members of al-Shabaab through its Rewards for Justice program.

The judges’ panel for the King Abdul Aziz Contest for Beautiful Camels (Muzayin Al-Ibl) for the Hijri year 1433 (2011-2012) identified three she-camels as the top animals in the pre-final round of the Sufr (yellow) category at the Umm Riqaiba ground on Friday. Chairman of the Allegiance Committee Prince Mishaal, who is also the chairman of the Supreme Committee for Muzayin Al-Ibl, will announce the final winner at the concluding function in January. Prince Abdullah bin Saad bin Jalawi is the chairman of the judges’ panel. Contests in the other categories will continue on Saturday. The contests are held for...

Over 13,000 camels to join beauty pageantry More than 13,000 camels from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf Arab countries will be herded inside a massive well-built enclosure in the Kingdom for the region’s largest camel beauty contest, starting on Sunday. Organisers said 13,678 male and female Arabian camels will take part in the event, which will attract 280 camel owners from Saudi Arabia, 22 from Kuwait, 17 from Qatar and five from the UAE. The contest will be held in North Saudi Arabia and will last 31 days, during which three winners will be picked by a committee...

As Eid-ul-Azha, a festival observed by sacrificing animals by Muslims, draws near, Kashmir sees exotic animals to be part of sacrificial animals' list this year. Topping the list are camels and Rs 2-lakh Afghan breed goats. These exotic animals will be part of more than two lakh sheep and goats to be sacrificed on the occasion in Srinagar alone. In the outskirts of Srinagar, Parimpora mandi, where grocery imports from outside the state come is abuzz with hundreds of sheep up for sale. But the eye catcher among the flock are tall camels, a desert animal barely known to Kashmiri...

Rescuers racing against time to save a camel from drowning failed to lift the massive animal out as it slipped off the ropes and disappeared down into the water pit to the disappointment and grief of the crowd. The thrilling rescue attempt was caught on video in Saudi Arabia and it showed the camel was just a step to life before it plunged back to death. The 54-second film, carried by Saudi newspapers, showed rescuers using a bulldozer and thick ropes to lift the female camel out of the water pit after it had apparently stepped on the open hole...

Nanobodies produced by camels have unique properties, which can be used in future drug development. New research published in the Journal of Controlled Release confirms that nanobodies can help scientists in the fight against cancer. University of Copenhagen

> The Guardian describes the benefits of going out and shooting a camel. “Australia’s population of wild camels, the Financial Times reveals, may soon be shot in order to earn carbon credits under the country’s forthcoming emissions trading scheme. Each one of the creatures is estimated to produce a tonne of carbon dioxide a year – about the same as a 7,000km flight – not to mention the environmental havoc they cause in a fragile desert landscape more suited to amiable marsupials.” Alternatives have been considered, such as feeding the camels birth-control tablets, but there are doubts whether this would...

Kill a camel, earn cash for cutting greenhouse gases: That offer may be coming soon in Australia, where vast numbers of the nonnative, methane-belching animals have been trampling the Outback for more than a century. The government has proposed that killing camels be officially registered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has the world's largest population of wild camels _ an estimated 1.2 million _ and considers them to be a growing environmental problem. The proposal, released for public comment this week, would allow sharpshooters to earn so-called carbon credits for slaughtering camels. Industrial polluters around the...

* Over one million feral camels live in arid and semi-arid regions of the Australian outback. * The camels demolish air conditioners, fences and toilet systems and foul critical watering holes. * A new program aims to track the camels by allowing people to report sightings using Google maps. The single-humped dromedary camels were brought mainly from India in the second half of the 19th century to work in the scrubby, red-earthed arid parts of the Australian outback, transporting people and as pack animals. Once trains, roads and machinery made them obsolete as workers, the camels were let loose, creating...